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The Australian Freelance Writers Network

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Members of the closed FreelineOZ Google Group need to be invited by a moderator to join.

To request an invitation to the group, fill in the form on this page and include some brief details about your connection with Australian freelance writing

To combat evil spammers, applications without credible details will be automatically rejected. If you feel we’ve rejected your application in error, please drop us a line.

Below you’ll find guidelines for posting to the Freeline group – and how to trouble-shoot your setup.

GETTING AN INVITATION

If your submission is accepted, you will receive an invitation to join the group, which is attached to the email address you used when requesting membership of Freeline. Accept the invitation, and you’ll get a confirmation email and can set up your email preferences. (You might get directly added – you still need to set up preferences if you don’t want the default of receiving every email individually).

WELCOME

Welcome to FreelineOZ, a mailing list for freelance journalists (recently amalgamated from afwnetwork and freeline-sydney) which has lightly moderated online discussions hosted by Google Groups. Any Australian working freelance journalist is welcome to join the online discussion.

Group members are journalists, writers, and other freelancers (including some editors and photographers) with different specialities and interests.

Our members come from all over Australia and some of us meet up in person at local events. Anyone on the list is welcome to organise an event. These are often held in Sydney or Melbourne – sometimes we meet in the city, some people occasionally organise a local coffee-shop meet.

Many of our members freelance part-time, but we do ask members to please voluntarily unsubscribe from the group if they move into a position which may have a conflict of interest with freelance journalism – for example, if you start work as a staff editor or publisher or public relations professional.

HOW FREELINE WORKS

This is an email-based discussion board. You will receive an email each time someone sends a message to Freeline (though you can log in and change the options to receive these less often). If you want to reply to a message, either reply to the Group (if you want all 200+ members to see the message) or reply to the person who sent the original email.

If you want to post a question, suggestion, link or other information useful to freelancers, simply send an email to freelineoz@googlegroups.com and it will be sent to the list after approval by moderators.

You can also view past messages online (go to groups.google.com.au, you must be signed in to google under the email you registered with).

HOW TO SET UP YOUR EMAIL PREFERENCES FOR FREELINE

If you have never set up a Google ID before, OR you want the list emails to go to a non-gmail address, you will need to create a Google ID. Choose ‘Sign in’ (blue box top left corner of your browser) then choose ‘Create an account’ (blue text under the big ‘Sign In’ button).

Note – Google ID is not the same as gmail. You DO need a GoogleID to use Google Groups (when you create your GoogleID, just use your regular email address and invent a password). You DON’T need to set up a gmail account.

Because this new group is still an email-based discussion board, you can opt for a digest or to get each message as soon as it’s posted as an email (the default). You only need to log in if you want to change your preferences or if you only want to view it online.

If you reply to a message, it will go to the Group by default, but if you don’t want all 200+ members to see the message, you need to choose to reply to the person who sent the original email.

MODERATION POLICY

List moderation is ‘by exception’ – most posts are not moderated. New members are put on automatic moderation – so their first couple of posts must be approved by a moderator. After several successful posts, a user is approved to make unmoderated posts.

If a member ‘spams’ the list or makes posts outside the guidelines (below), or if there is a complaint from another user about someone, that member is returned to moderated posts.

Any member who spams the list or makes irrelevant posts frequently, or harasses another member may be removed from the list. Decisions are made in good faith by volunteer moderators.

POSTING GUIDELINES FOR FREELINE

The prime objective of the forum is to discuss and share information about freelance journalism, writing and editing issues, to offer each other a helping hand with work and contract issues, a place to arrange potential collaboration on projects and a friendly environment in which to discuss ideas and problems. We do this in a positive and constructive environment that respects a range of opinions.

Most people know how to work respectfully in a large group mailing list and it is not the objective of this forum to censor or nanny its users.

Moderated messages sent to the forum are approved in line with the following guidelines:

2) Necessity. As everyone is swamped by email nowadays, messages must add new content to an ongoing discussion, ie more than the equivalent of “I agree” or “Me too”. Messages which contain a response solely of interest to an individual should be emailed to that person only, not to the entire group.

3) Tone. While it’s essential to have a free and open exchange of views on important issues, there’s no need for aggressive content, which has the potential to spark a ‘flame war’. We may ask members to rephrase a message to remove overly aggressive phrasing. Keep it topical, not personal.

4) Defamation. You are required as a condition of membership of this group not to post defamatory material. If posted material is considered potentially defamatory, we will remove the online message and ask the person posting to rephrase the message appropriately. Once you press send, emails to this list are potentially distributed to all members of this forum.

5) Copyright and Attribution. You are required as a condition of membership of this group not to violate copyright. Please ensure posts are original and that copyright is not breached. Do not post an entire article, if you want to share something, please supply a link to a web page.

7) PR, Spam and self-promotion. This is not a site for marketing or self-promotion, please don’t circulate press releases, marketing, political, charity or other promotional material, no matter how worthy; there are other groups for journalists with these interests.

8) Confidentiality. Messages posted to the group are regarded as confidential and may not be forwarded to people outside the group without express written permission from the author/s and one of the moderators.

IDENTIFY YOURSELF

Members are encouraged to use their real name when posting.

Your freelineOZ membership will use your Google+ profile. If you do not already have one, consider setting up a profile to help identify yourself to fellow forum members. Alternatively you might decide to include a link to your website or LinkedIn profile as part of your email signature at the bottom of your emails.

FREELINE TROUBLESHOOTING:

MY EMAILS BOUNCE

If you are getting emails from freeline, but when you try to send an email to Freeline, your message bounces with the information “you do not have permission to post” or “the group does not exist” – check: are you sending your email to freelineoz@googlegroups.com ?
If so, see Part C under “You are not a member” problem below!

ERROR MESSAGE – “YOU ARE NOT A MEMBER”

If you try to log in to the freeline group online and get a message saying “you are not a member” even though you receive the emails – there are a few possible causes.

A) Maybe you don’t have a Google account

1) If you don’t remember ever setting up a Google account, you’ll need to create one. Go to Google – http://www.google.com (it might take you to the .au page, that’s ok!)
2) Select the menu option in the top right corner that says ‘Sign in’
3) You will come to a page where a blue box asks for your email and password. Underneath is smaller blue text that says ‘Create an account’
4) Select “Create an Account”; then type in your current email address (the one to which you receive ‘Freeline’ emails) and choose a password, then answer a few questions from Google. Voila! You should be fine now

B) Maybe you’re not signed into Google (or someone else is signed in on the computer you are using)

5) Go to Google – http://www.google.com (it might take you to the .au page, that’s ok!)
6) Use the menu in the top right corner of the page top right menu – if there is a menu option that says ‘Sign in’, click on the top right hand corner –– and enter your Google email address and your password. But if the top right corner menu says ‘Sign Out’ – that means someone is already logged in. If you are not sure if you are logged in, or if it’s someone else, click ‘Sign Out’ and try signing back in.

7) Now look at the top left of the screen – options are Web, images, other, other then More. Select the ‘More’ drop-down menu, you’ll see a long list, choose ‘Groups’
8) You are now in your Google Groups section and you will see a box that
hopefully includes ‘FreelineOZ’ – click on that
OK, you are now at the home page. You can read the discussions online by clicking the menu option at the right that says ‘Discussions’

C) Maybe you are signed in to Google under a DIFFERENT email to the email that is registered in freeline’s membership list

1) To find out: go back and check your freeline emails to make sure you are signing in under the correct email address.
2) Don’t forget: – You do not have to use GMail to set up a Google account; just nominate your current email address and set up a password and that becomes your Google account name.
3) if your freeline email and your google email are different – you can also set up an extra account in Google if you wish.
For example, let’s say you have received an invitation to join Freeline to your home email account, john@bigpond.com. – but you already have a Gmail account called john@gmail.com and a Google account where you log in as john@gmail.com . And let’s say you want your Freeline emails to go to your john@bigpond.com email address – that’s fine; you just need to set up another Google account, but this time, you sign in as john@bigpond.com ; then you will access Freeline online using the email address that you want the Freeline emails to be sent to.

I WANT TO READ THE DISCUSSION ONLINE

Go to Google home page – http://www.google.com.au and log in
Use the menu in the top right corner of the page top right menu – if there is a menu option that says ‘Sign in’, click on the top right hand corner –– and enter your Google email address and your password. But if the top right corner menu says ‘Sign Out’ – that means you are already logged in. (Make sure you are signed in as yourself, not under someone else’s login!)
Now look at the top left of the screen – options are Web, images, other, other then More. Select the ‘More’ drop-down menu, you’ll see a long list, choose ‘Groups’
You are now in your Google Groups section and you will see a box that hopefully includes ‘FreelineOZ’ – click on that
OK, you are now at the home page. You can read the discussions online by clicking the menu option at the right that says ‘Discussions’

I’M GETTING TOO MANY EMAILS

You might want to change to a daily digest to reduce the email flood from Freeline.
Sign in to the freeline group (see above).
From the home page, you will see a list of menu options on the right that includes ‘Discussions’ and ‘Edit my membership’. Choose ‘Edit my membership’
You have the option “How do I want to read this group;’ the Abridged or Digest options will cut the flood down to one or less a day.
Don’t forget to press ‘Save these Settings’

I’VE STOPPED GETTING FREELINE EMAILS.

You may have changed your email address or your email options.
First step is contact the moderator to check that you are still a member – and which email address you have registered under.
Have you checked the email inbox for the correct email address? Do you have a rule set up that sends the Freeline emails into a particular folder?
What spam controls are in place in your email system? Freeline may have been identified as spam by your system, check your spam filter.
Check that you have the desired Delivery options on the Freeline site (sometimes these randomly change, I have no idea why.) Your options are Email, Abridged, Digest or No Email for people who want to read the discussion online.
To check: Sign in to the freeline group (see above).
From the home page, you will see a list of menu options on the right that includes ‘Discussions’ and ‘Edit my membership’. Choose ‘Edit my membership’
You have the option “How do I want to read this group.’
Many users choose the Abridged or Digest options to cut the flood down to one or less a day. If you choose ‘No Email’ then you can still access the group online.
Don’t forget to press ‘Save these Settings’
If you have gone through all of the above steps and still are not receiving emails, check the date of the last email you received. Sometimes the group goes quiet for a few days – you can check the online discussion to find out if you have missed anything.

Join the Discussion

Australian freelance journalists: Send us a request to join this group, include a short bio and your contact details and our volunteer group moderators will be in touch.
You need to have a Google account and be signed in, first. We'll then respond with your 'Google Groups' invitation. Check this page for information about how the group works.